Judging the Booker by its covers

I'm hoping you'll join me in a careful assessment of this year's prize contenders over the coming weeks. In the meantime, why let not having read any of them interfere with making some satisfyingly snap judgments?

The publication of the list so fired me with enthusiasm, in fact, that I immediately volunteered myself for the job of reading each and every volume on it.

The idea is to run a kind of (ahem) Booker club on these pages, discussing each book in alphabetical order at the rate of one a week, giving vent to our own opinions on each work and also maybe laying down a few odds and predictions. I'll be starting with Nicola Barker and I'll be keen to see if anyone else shares my opinions - or indeed completely disagrees with me - this time next week.

(At this rate, it's true, we won't have got through the longlist until well after the ultimate winner has been announced. That won't stop the exercise being interesting, but it might make it marginally less exciting, if that's the right word. We may yet come up with an accelerated approach, but this hasn't been decided yet - which is exciting in itself, yes?)

In the meantime, however, my mild embarrassment at not knowing the first thing about any of the authors except Ian McEwan and AN Wilson has been offset by the realisation that this ignorance allows me to judge the Booker books entirely by their covers. I've got no preconceptions and no background knowledge, and so, having hauled a rucksack full of hardbacks home from Waterstone's yesterday, I'm able to make judgments based solely on jacket design and publishers' blurbs.

In the hope that it might be a fun way to get the ball rolling - and perhaps provide an interesting showcase of how much you can accurately say about a book without reading it - I hereby record my initial, literally superficial, observations.

Nicola Barker - Darkmans Oh God. It's 900 pages long. The sheer weight of this mighty tome presents a problem, since my decision to read the books in alphabetical order means I'll have to finish it by this time next week.

Fortunately, closer inspection reveals that the type is quite big, and there are lots of spaces. Plus, the skulls and tombstone motifs give it an appealing gothic edge. Maybe I'm going to like it after all ...

Peter Ho Davies - The Welsh Girl I know it's wrong and I know it's immature, but I find this guy's middle name rather amusing. The cover of the book, however, is splendid: reminiscent of 1950s train posters, and evocative of magical escape. I'm already intrigued. Edward Docx - Self Help Docx, if cover photos are anything to go by, is good looking and not that much older than me. He is also, I read on the back "fiendishly clever". Even if I enjoy this book, reading it will be painful.

Tan Tan Eng - The Gift Of Rain I'm not sure what the butterflies and torn bits of wallpaper signify, and the red and gold type has unfortunate echoes of a cheap Chinese restaurant. All the same, the back-cover blurb about aikido and knowledge coming "at a terrible price" sounds exciting and I'm already biased in the book's favour as it's a product of one of the two independent publisher underdogs on the list.

Anne Enright - The Gathering A half-ruined family photograph on the front and mention of "Dublin", "sexual history" and "lyricism" on the inner sleeve elicit the big yawn response. The fact that the author is tucking into a pretty serious looking afternoon tea in her photo, however, makes me wonder if we might not get along after all.

Moshin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist Instead of having information about the book's contents, The Reluctant Fundamentalist's cover features quotes from other writers. Given that two of them are Philip Pullman and Kiran Desai (yes, last year's winner) these are probably worth taking seriously. Pullman says it's "more exciting than any thriller I've read for a long time." Sold.

Lloyd Jones - Mister Pip This is my favourite cover. It's lovely: vaguely art deco, full of exotic promise and unencumbered by the usual critical encomiums. An object worth owning for its look and feel alone. Unfortunately, the squiggly lines in the title letters do make it seem like the book might be called Mr Pipe, and Mr Pipe is a very unfortunate title for anyone with a smattering of French.

Gifted - Nikita Lalwani The advertised "comic hinterland" of "histories, arithmetic and cumin seeds" strikes me as unusual and original, if nothing else. Sadly, I'm willing to bet now that if this young female novelist of Indian extraction wins the prize the judges will face accusations of political correctness gone mad, no matter how good it is.

Ian McEwan - On Chesil Beach Clearly he's going to win, to make up for the fact that Atonement didn't. Plus, the book is only 130 pages long, so I'm all for it. Catherine O'Flynn - What Was Lost Another one from a small publisher that Jonathan Coe (no less) promises will "skewer" our "consumer society". Sounds eminently worthy. Michael Redhill - Consolation This time the blurb tells us that "Consolation evokes the mysteries of love and memory, and what suffering the absence of a beloved truly means." And that, truly, means nothing to me at all. Indra Sinha - Animal's People The story of an Indian child mutilated by an explosion at an American chemical factory, with the tagline "I used to be human once ..." First impressions suggest that Animal's People will be emotionally draining, while an appendix of "Khaufpuri" words in the back pages words implies that it could also be hard work. Here's hoping that it's correspondingly rewarding.

AN Wilson - Winnie And Wolf I like the title (presenting the intriguing possibility of some kind of Pooh bear, Little Red Riding Hood, Hitler crossover) but everything else about this book remains wrapped in mystery for me, since it hasn't yet been published. On intrigue alone, it's my favourite so far.